Freethinking Out Loudhttp://www.acidzen.org
dandellion Kimban's blogThu, 31 Mar 2016 08:34:03 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.12http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gifSome Rights ReservedSocial Networks as Editors-in-Chief of Your Lifehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/Xbw9ln1AZZM/social-networks-editors-in-chief
http://www.acidzen.org/2016/social-networks-editors-in-chief#respondWed, 30 Mar 2016 22:51:52 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1787A week ago Twitter introduced “Show me the best Tweets first” option. The new algorithm will choose what will you see on your timeline based on (supposedly) your previous use of Twitter. The only good thing about it is that you can opt-out of it. The rest is pure evil. First to mess with your timeline was Facebook. Then Pinterest

]]>A week ago Twitter introduced “Show me the best Tweets first” option. The new algorithm will choose what will you see on your timeline based on (supposedly) your previous use of Twitter. The only good thing about it is that you can opt-out of it. The rest is pure evil. First to mess with your timeline was Facebook. Then Pinterest followed, with additional annoyance of “picked for you” – recommendations that you never subscribed to. Unlike Twitter, these two won’t let you turn off the algorithmic timelines.

They all say it’s to make your timelines more interesting and relevant. And, partly, that is true. After all, if your timeline (by now bloated with posts from thousands of friends and contacts) is more relevant and interesting, you’ll spend more time there, scrolling and interacting. That’s their business and that’s what makes them money.

OK, fair enough. That’s what any media company would do, whether it is producing or crowdsourcing the content. But it’s not just about that. It’s not only about money, it’s about power as well. And that’s where the evil lies.

Let’s repeat for the millionth time: It is 21st century and the information is power. That’s was always true but it gets more and more important in our present way of life. Traditional media knew and exploited that since its beginnings. With the emergence of the Internet, we managed to escape them. Social networks were a nice and convenient way to spread the news and information that had no way of showing into newspapers, radio and TV. Also, they were a quick way to filter the news about the things that you actually care about (or, at least, that your friends care about). You choose your friends and contacts, you get information they share. For a while, everything was nice.

But social media wasn’t a dawn of a new free world. It was just a change of the big players. Thirty years ago it was TV stations who controlled what you know about the world. Recently, Facebook and Twitter applied for the position of your personal editor-in-chief. You had no saying in it, but they got the job.

It can, and does, go much much further than that. Just remember the Arab Spring and the role of Twitter in it. People still debate if that role was a good or a bad one, but that’s beside the point here. Problem is that a private company was a communication backbone of a turnmoil on the other continent. They had a monopoly on transfer of the information. Like that wasn’t too much, now they want a descrete right to decide which information gets through and which doesn’t. A social network with control over what people think.

For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.

Legal and ethical concerns aside, it’s not that we don’t know that emotions are contagious. What is important here is that somebody is actively experimenting with it. For pure science’s sake? I don’t think so.

It turns out that some guy in California can make you, or any group of people, feel great or shitty tomorrow on his whim. Or, more likely, make you feel good or pissed at something specific according to somebody’s plan. Brainwashing and hypnosis on massive scale are just a push of a button away.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2016/social-networks-editors-in-chief/feed0http://www.acidzen.org/2016/social-networks-editors-in-chiefWill Big Business Legalize Marijuana?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/5t8NMB3H8Lc/big-business-legalize-marijuana
http://www.acidzen.org/2013/big-business-legalize-marijuana#respondSat, 08 Jun 2013 11:38:11 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1536If you have a slightest knowledge of what I usually talk, you probably wouldn’t bet that I am in any way skeptical about legalization of marijuana. But I am. Not for any of the usual reasons, those used by people that still live in the days of Reefer Madness. No, marijuana is a nice plant with many benefits for the

]]>If you have a slightest knowledge of what I usually talk, you probably wouldn’t bet that I am in any way skeptical about legalization of marijuana. But I am.

Not for any of the usual reasons, those used by people that still live in the days of Reefer Madness. No, marijuana is a nice plant with many benefits for the body and the mind if used properly. The problem is not there.

Problem is what will happen when it gets legalized.

When marijuana gets legalized, the new players will jump in the game. The local kid you dial for a small package, the medical dispensers if you are in one of those U.S. states and the coffee-shops if you are lucky enough to live where those are operating, might go into history. As it happened many times before, big corporate business will take over.

As BBC reports, the former Microsoft’s corporate strategy manager Jamen Shively is going to start a new business. He

plans to launch an American chain which is the leader in both recreational and medical cannabis, much like Starbucks is the dominant name in coffee.

“We are planning to build a national and international network of cannabis businesses,” he said.

Now, you might ask, what a guy from IT does in marijuana business? Are there MS Weed and iPot on the horizon? No, there is no hidden connection between weed and software (beside a recreational habit of so many programmers and software designers). The things are much simpler and more obvious.

The projected size of the United States market, once full legalization with regulation exists across the country, estimates somewhere in $200 billion for the United States market and the total worldwide market would be somewhere north of half a trillion dollars.

And Jamen says, he’d be happy if his venture get 40% of it. Gotta admire the unpretentiousness of the guy.

This might have some serious political consequences. Lawmakers are usually more ready to listen to people with heaps of money invested in something than to people on the streets talking something reasonable. In other words, this kind of operation might take us closer to legalization than we were ever before. Not that one business guy can make it legal, but it might give a significant push. That was the good news.

Still, this IT thing is ruining my own expectations. Somehow, it always seemed logical that when marijuana start being big legal business, it will be either tobacco industry or big pharmaceuticals taking over the game. Or probably both.

For the time being, they surely have enough reasons to keep weed illegal. It’s a huge competition to the dangerous, over-priced drugs they sell. But strategists at those industries are not fools, they know that they can’t keep this sweet moment forever. And, at some point, they will turn side, start growing, branding it and selling.

And then, the pretty dream of legalized weed will shift into nightmare.

You might think that your local supplier-kid is kind of a thug, maybe he even spent some time behind bars… or you may believe the stories about those Dutch coffee-shops being dirty dens of vice and whatnot, but if you want a real mafia, real crime, real addiction-pushers, then you put tobacco and pharmaceutical industries in the story. And that’s the bad news.

At the press conference, Jamen Shively was accompanied by a former president of Mexico, Vincente Fox, who said:

What a difference it makes to have Jamen here sitting at my side instead of Chapo Guzman.

Mr. Guzman is Mexican drug-lord, i.e. the competition. I have no doubts that Chapo is all but a nice guy. Just take a quick look at Wikipedia entry on him and see why he is considered to have surpassed legendary Pablo Escobar and why his head is priced five million USD. But still, it’s hard not to find tobacco and pharmaceutical industries less dangerous.

But big corporate-crime stories aside, what this change in supplier will do for the marijuana market?

Well, there will be Starbucks mentality of weed. Which sounds terrible. But as Starbucks failed to ruin coffee for the whole world, this won’t ruin the weed as well. The other danger is that the new weed will be sprinkled with all the shit they can invent to make it addictive. They do that to tobacco, after all.

But, with a bit of luck, there will be some good stuff around, though you’ll probably have to know where to buy it. Not much different than today then. Except you won’t need to look around and give money while handshaking with a guy on the street. Of course, that’s if the new industry don’t go the regular path of patenting stuff and make weed legal only for themselves and spend half of their profits destroying small independent competition. Which won’t be much of a surprise. We’ll see.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2013/big-business-legalize-marijuana/feed0http://www.acidzen.org/2013/big-business-legalize-marijuanaJoin The Black March!http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/GeU92zBcyr8/join-black-march
http://www.acidzen.org/2012/join-black-march#commentsWed, 29 Feb 2012 09:13:18 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1480Remember when we recently made that huge roar all over the Internet and repelled the SOPA proposition? Sure you do. We won the battle, but we surely haven't won the war. Yet. So, it is the time for the next round. And this one's gonna be really fun. Codename: Operation Black March. What's the idea of Black March? Let's show

So, it is the time for the next round. And this one's gonna be really fun. Codename: Operation Black March.

What's the idea of Black March?

Let's show the entertainment industry that we can happily live without them and that we won't die out of boredom if there wasn't them.

As you probably know, each company count their profits at the end of each quarter. On those occasions the suits get together in board rooms, sit and watch silly PowerPoints with graphs and pie charts. Except that this time, there will be no pie. And the chart will go straight down through the floor.

So, what do we have to do?

Do not buy a single record. Do not download a single song, legally or illegally. Do not go to see a single film in cinemas, or download a copy. Do not buy a DVD in the stores. Do not buy a videogame. Do not buy a single book or magazine.

Wait the 4 weeks to buy them in April, see the film later, etc. Holding out for just 4 weeks will lave a gaping hole in the media and entertainment companies' profits for the 1st quarter. An economic hit which will in turn be observed by governments worldwide as stocks and shares will blip from a large enough loss of incomes.

OK, I hear you saying: But what will I do the whole month with no movies, no new music and no video-games? Do you really expect us to live a whole month without music and movies?

Of course not. That's where the fun part comes. There is a hell lot of entertainment and culture out there that is not driven by corporations. Stuff that's been made for the sake of art and entertainment, not profit. Stuff they don't want you to find because once you find it, their boys bands, mindless attempts of comedies and empty dramas won't stand a chance. Al those millions of dollars in production and even more in marketing will be useless.

So, where to get free movies and music legally?

Let's cover the music first. My first stop would be jamendo. If you're not familiar with it, it's the largest collection of free music in the world. And by free, I mean not just for zero price but also not owned nor controlled by any corporation or performance rights organization. It's published there by artists themselves under the Creative Commons license. Similar and also worth checking are SoundClick and Tribe of Noise.

Before you think it's a pile of amateur shit there, go take a look. Sure, not everything is top stuff, but neither it is when it comes on corporate CD. You have to do your digging and exploring. There's a nice tag cloud to start with your favourite genre. Be sure that you will find some real gems. I did. Many times.

And then, there is Open Culture, a project that deserves a whole post for itself. In short, it's a directory of free cultural and educational media on the Web. And it's huge. It lists hundreds of free academic courses, language courses, great movies, e-books, audio books… you get the idea. Only Hitchcock, Tarkowsky and noir collections might keep you busy for much longer than one month.

Black March is not just about showing the entertainment industry that we can live without them

It's about realizing that we can live without them. It's about switching to a healthy cultural diet. Do something positive for your brain. It feels good.

And, please, if you have more sources of free media that you enjoy, share it in the comments. Show us what you like to listen and watch. Sharing is half of the fun. It's also the important part of culture, the part they are trying to take from us by the insanity of copyright laws and censorship. So, put your pirate hat on and join us!

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2012/join-black-march/feed1http://www.acidzen.org/2012/join-black-marchBe A Pirate!http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/hzqJyw9WXUE/be-a-pirate
http://www.acidzen.org/2012/be-a-pirate#commentsTue, 24 Jan 2012 20:00:57 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1457Over and over we hear how piracy is stealing from the artists and how it's damaging the recording and publishing industry and how art and entertainment will disappear if we continue with file-sharing. Bullshit. Because no artist will starve because of piracy. Ever! Don't take my word for it. Let's see what artists say. Couple of days ago, Paulo Coelho invited

]]>Over and over we hear how piracy is stealing from the artists and how it's damaging the recording and publishing industry and how art and entertainment will disappear if we continue with file-sharing. Bullshit.

The more often we hear a song on the radio, the keener we are to buy the CD. It’s the same with literature.

The more people ‘pirate’ a book, the better. If they like the beginning, they’ll buy the whole book the next day, because there’s nothing more tiring than reading long screeds of text on a computer screen.

Let's not take just Coelho's word either.

In december, Louis C. K., a stand-up comedian, put $220.000 of his own money in the production of a show Live at the Beacon Theater, made a web site and let the people download or stream the stuff for $5:

No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.

Not to mention no producers influences on content and production of the show.

And five dollars is significantly less than $20 that a regular region-protected video with all the annoying FBI shit-warnings would cost if distributed the usual way.

Twelve hours after the website went live, it earned $250.000, thus returning the whole investment.

Twelve days later, it earned its first million. Yes, million dollars that Louis C. K. broke into four pieces, giving one of them (the largest one) to charity. Which means not only that he covered costs of productions, the crew, himself and his kids schooling, he actually made a significant surplus.

See? It's actually profitable to give stuff for free. Why? Because people will pay a fair price for a good product. By paying for something that you already got for free you are investing in the future works of the author you like. It's simple as that.

It's not the artists that are hurt by piracy.

So where is the problem with piracy and who is afraid of it?

See the big purple slice? To whom it goes? Corporations, "the industry", label, executives of whatever, bankers and investors, people with suits and neckties, bunch of bastards that never did anything for that piece of art you enjoy. People who placed themselves as the middlemen and take their undeserved cut. People who now want to put you in jail and who want to turn the Internet into a giant censorship machine because they can't make anything useful or beautiful in their lives. Parasites.

Well, fuck them.

Piracy is not about getting stuff for free.

It is taking from the greedy parasites. Let's not feed them. Let's give them a chance to earn their living by actually providing something valuable.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2012/be-a-pirate/feed2http://www.acidzen.org/2012/be-a-pirate#SOPA Blackout And Social Myopiahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/iHBqGswJBpI/sopa-blackout-social-myopia
http://www.acidzen.org/2012/sopa-blackout-social-myopia#respondThu, 19 Jan 2012 00:52:04 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1436You'd think we filled every ear and every eyeball on the Internet with the SOPA story. But no. Today Wikipedia went black and you see tons of reactions of how Wikipedia is deleted for good, screams about due projects and homeworks and fuckoffs to Obama and Wikipedia itself. Not to mentions 140 character expressions of utter stupidity. Which all leads

]]>You'd think we filled every ear and every eyeball on the Internet with the SOPA story.

But no. Today Wikipedia went black and you see tons of reactions of how Wikipedia is deleted for good, screams about due projects and homeworks and fuckoffs to Obama and Wikipedia itself. Not to mentions 140 character expressions of utter stupidity.

Which all leads us to conclusion that nobody bothered to read a message:

For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.

One would guess that three sentences are not that hard to read. It's Wikipedia, not Icanhascheesburger, reading is supposed to be kind of regular thing there.

(One would also expect they'll manage to press stop button before the page goes black and thus actually read what they wanted to, but I digress.)

You need Wikipedia to do your homework. Nice. You get pissed learning that Wikipedia is not available today because of some protest. Bummer. But you fail to realize that not only Wikipedia but the large part of the Web can be blacklisted because of that dirty love game of corporations, U.S. Congress and big money. You fail to realize that Wikipedia, LOLcats, YouTube and many others might be really shut down for good.

And that's why today's blackout of Wikipedia, reddit, WordPress and 75.000 others (this humble blog among them) went on strike.

We take Internet and many other things for granted, as they are our right. And they are. But every right we have must be earned. And re-earned from time to time.

I'm sitting here, in a warm room and comfortable chair, typing this freely. I have a right to type freely. You know why? Because my granddad and his friends were shooting Nazis half a century ago. And their ancestors fought whoever was a bad guy of the time before that. And, I like to think, because I ate my dose of teargas and screamed in the face of armed police a decade ago.

Speaking of which, I remember people who were complaining about our blocking of the streets and making terrible noise during evening TV news. They used to say we're restricting their rights to move freely. Sure we did! But they never mentioned those who were restricting everybody's right to live freely in a free and prosperous country. Somehow, that problem was out of their scope. The only difference is that back then I thought it's just Serbia. Now I realize it's the whole world.

It doesn't make sense to whine about Wikipedia not being available because it fights for your right to have free Internet.

Your right to write your homework, watch silly cats on YouTube afterwards and whine on Twitter is earned by granddads. Payed in blood. Literally. But your right to that same thing in a month or two… well that's something you'll have to earn. So, pretty please, stop whining. Learn what is going on in the world around you. At least by another Hitler video.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2012/sopa-blackout-social-myopia/feed0http://www.acidzen.org/2012/sopa-blackout-social-myopiaHow Do Prayers And Rituals Workhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/o71Cop1SuUM/how-do-prayers-rituals-work
http://www.acidzen.org/2012/how-do-prayers-rituals-work#commentsSat, 07 Jan 2012 16:29:33 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1384This story begins with a prayer. A rather unconventional one. To a rather unconventional deity: Asphaulta, Asphaulta, goddess of grace, please will you grant me a parking space? WTF?!? Let's hear the author, and probably the sole user, of this prayer, Jabinaise (who is, btw, an atheist) to explain it for us: When I go to the super market I

]]>This story begins with a prayer. A rather unconventional one. To a rather unconventional deity:

Asphaulta, Asphaulta, goddess of grace, please will you grant me a parking space?

WTF?!?

Let's hear the author, and probably the sole user, of this prayer, Jabinaise (who is, btw, an atheist) to explain it for us:

When I go to the super market I say this little prayer (I know, atheist blasphemy). This is said with the implied intention of getting not only a parking space, but a good one, preferably up front. When I say this little wish, some of the time I get a space right up front, sometimes a little further back, rarely though do I not get one.

Jabinaise argues that the result of the prayer is that he tends to remember positive outcomes and forget the negative ones. As a result, his perception differs from the actual statistics. Which of course, counts a lot. But that might not be all there is.

Yes, I'm saying that Asphaulta prayer might work.

Because magic is not what you've learned from the movies

Yes, I know that you might have been thinking that magic is dealing with some sort of supernatural powers or whatever. Truth to be told I can't even imagine what supernatural is supposed to mean. Funny thing is that many of the magic practitioners also think there is some supernatural mumbo-jumbo behind it. Understanding the inner mechanism is not essential in this case.

Prayer like this (and it's not just prayers, it could be a huge variety of actions) actually mobilize the mind towards finding a better parking space. As you know, large part of tasks like finding parking space is done below the conscious level (you'd gone crazy otherwise) so this is just a way to activate and employ your mental mechanisms to a certain purpose.

To find a parking space, you need to employ perception and a bit of organization in your cruising the parking lot. Sure, you can do that on conscious level, but many things our brains do are better done if we don't interfere consciously and cause mental blocks by "overconcentrating". Small magic ritual or prayer does the job without the ill-effects. It just sends the message where needed and let the brain do the rest. It simply activates the auto-pilot.

It's not just prayers. Some people do the prayers, some paint or dance, some have more or less elaborate rituals. It all depends on personal preference and complexity of the task. It would be kind of cumbersome to draw circles in ground and sacrifice a rooster every time you have trouble finding a parking space.

Every magic has limitations

I spoiled the fun now, haven't I?

Use some common sense and you'll realize that it's not just your wish and power of your brain that can change the outside world (or even your inner world) just because you want it to be changed. Sometimes, there's no god so powerful to make you a parking space. Or whatever your soul is longing for.

Don't be silly believing that your bedtime prayer for world peace will make greedy politicians and insane generals stop bombing poor countries in the morning. But that prayer might bring some peace in you and make your actions serve the aim better. Changing yourself is a great first step towards changing the world. You know that Gandhi's quote, right?

So, what makes the magic work?

Well, that's a million dollars question. One that won't be answered here.

But practice helps. Also, learning. And more practice. Good thing about all those entities that people pray to is that more you ask from them, the friendlier they get. In religious terms that's called devotion, but you might think of it as exercise. It's, more or less, the same thing.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2012/how-do-prayers-rituals-work/feed2http://www.acidzen.org/2012/how-do-prayers-rituals-workHow BitCoin Workshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/3-KhQVodUYw/how-bitcoin-works
http://www.acidzen.org/2011/how-bitcoin-works#commentsTue, 22 Nov 2011 11:07:50 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1354In the previous post I made an introduction to BitCoin, a new digital currency, independent from governments, banks and corporations – maintained by its users. The post was mainly about the good aspects of such an experiment. Now it is time to see how BitCoin actually works and what can be done with it. So, how does BitCoin work? I

]]>In the previous post I made an introduction to BitCoin, a new digital currency, independent from governments, banks and corporations – maintained by its users. The post was mainly about the good aspects of such an experiment.

Now it is time to see how BitCoin actually works and what can be done with it.

So, how does BitCoin work?

I tried to simplify this part as much as possible. If it still gives you troubles, gently skip to the next section.

Essence of BitCoin is pretty much the same as the BitTorrent filesharing technology which actually inspired it. There's no central server that keeps all the data. As there is no central bank and server, the data about all the transactions is stored on the computers of the users. Unlike the transactions, data about your amount of money is stored on your computer only. Of course, you can (and should) backup that file (somewhere local, not on a cloud!) or even keep it on your flash drive and take it with you. More about this later.

Each transaction is encrypted by the same system banks use with credit cards. Except that it's not your name on the card so you have perfect anonymity of what you do with your money. Once the transaction is done, other computers in the system check if those BitCoins weren't spent already. That process takes about 10 minutes to an hour and is called verification.

That's nice, but how does it work from user's perspective?

Luckily, this part is easy.

You download and install BitCoin software. It's available for Linux, Mac and Windows or you can get the source code and compile it for whatever other exotic pile of silicone and wires you are running. Then you run the software (bet you have guessed that, huh?) and let it download the blocks. Thus you became a part of the torrent swarm which makes this system so great.

Not that you need to know this, but blocks are records of all the BitCoin transactions to the date, so it will probably take a couple of hours. If you want to know how many blocks has been generated so far you can check that here. This huge downloading takes place only the first time you run the software. After that, it only updates new blocks and that goes quite fast.

You'll probably want to encrypt your wallet (in the Settings menu). Use a good password not the usual shit you put on every mail and Internet account you have. Write the password somewhere safe. You don't want to forget it as there's no password recovery emails nor answering who was your favourite teacher or the name of your first pet. If you forget the password, you burned all the money you had. That's why you should backup the wallet.dat file. Just, please, keep it secure and maybe even encrypted and password protected.

User interface is quite simple. There is a part of the window showing all your transactions and there is a field with a large string of random letters and numbers. That's your BitCoin address, thing you give people so they can send you the money. You can have as much of those as you fancy and you can assign each of them a label. It's wise to go that way and have different nicely labeled addresses for different streams of income.

If you want to send money to somebody, you just need their address. System will refuse to send money to non-existing address. It takes just a few seconds for the transfer, but up to one hour to be verified by the community.

How to get BitCoins?

The very same way you get any other money: by providing the goods and services to other members of the community. In this case, community being the other users of BitCoin.

You can also do the surveys and other Internet stuff to earn small amounts of BitCoins, but before that, be sure to visit BitCoin Faucet, which will give you some peanuts to help you get started. You need Google account and you can use it only once.

Mining BitCoins? Come again

Just as you can mine the gold and thus increase the overall amount of money and value in the world, you can mine BitCoins as well. Difference is that you don't have to go in Africa or South America and dig the ore from the ground. To make new BitCoins you have to run computer program.

I must say that this part is not quite clear to me, but in essence, you use your computer's spare processing power to solve some heavy math. If you hit the solution you've discovered 50 fresh new BitCoins. As I get it, the math has to do with all that encryption needed for safe and secure transactions.

Problem is that the math is quite heavy and that you have to be the first to solve the whole block of data. So, as any gold mining, success is one part the size of your mining operation and one part of pure luck. For the first, you need a lot of processing power (read: strong graphic cards, preferably more than one – up to the whole farm). For the later, you might want to join a group of people called pool, thus increasing your chances of hitting the score and then sharing the reward.

There is also a BitCoin mine that runs directly from your browser (you'll need to enable Java). It doesn't utilize much of your computer's potential, but it seems to have a lot of users. Consequently, it gives steady though quite small revenue. Also, it gives the option to help somebody else mining, so you can put a link on your blog and have your readers tip you in an unusual way. Or you can click here and make me a few cents richer while you are reading this. Thank you. ;)

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2011/how-bitcoin-works/feed3http://www.acidzen.org/2011/how-bitcoin-worksBitCoin – Digital Money For What It’s Worthhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/VhF-SbOvXPI/bitcoin-digital-money
http://www.acidzen.org/2011/bitcoin-digital-money#commentsWed, 16 Nov 2011 00:14:01 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1330I was aware of the BitCoin, the digital money, for a while now. But that was it. I read the wikis and browsed the web but, for the life of me, couldn't get a grip on the concept. Sure, independent digital currency that works over P2P network sounded great, but that was all I could tell. Now, after the mind-fermentation

]]>I was aware of the BitCoin, the digital money, for a while now. But that was it. I read the wikis and browsed the web but, for the life of me, couldn't get a grip on the concept. Sure, independent digital currency that works over P2P network sounded great, but that was all I could tell.

Now, after the mind-fermentation process took place, I can share some basic and easy-to-digest info about BitCoin.

What is BitCoin?

BitCoin (BTC) is digital currency, used to transfer relatively small amounts of money over the Internet. It can be exchanged both ways in other currencies like USD, Euro, Yen and others. It's functioning since the January 2009.

Unlike the other currencies, there is no government or even a corporation that stands behind it. It's completely community based. The system is regulated by open-source software, and maintained by its users – all of them – via peer-to-peer network.

And that's where all the good things about it come from.

What makes BitCoin so good?

The good – well great – thing is the idea of cutting out the middle man as well as the central authority from all our money business. Money is a very useful invention that benefits the community. So why wouldn't we organize and regulate our own common good instead of having somebody else do it with a huge risk of corruption, inflation and all other problems?

Does digital currency with no government and no banks behind it makes any sense?

Well, yes. Strange as it may sound, governments and banks are not needed to make a money work. Let's take a trip backwards the concept of money.

You have a bank account and those plastic cards that enable you to use the money from your account. Basically, your account is a number stored in bank's database about the amount of money you own. That number corresponds (and can be exchanged) to cash – pieces of paper with some numbers printed by the government, designating the value of papers.

We all know that the paper itself is not worth much and that the value of a bill actually comes from the gold and silver it represents. That is, that the paper bills correspond (and can be exchanged) for the gold. That's what the contract between you, me, government and the banks says.

What is not so widely known is that gold is not as valuable as the money it represents. Sure, gold is nice and shiny and even useful, but the mere gold in a bar with US$1000 imprint on it is not worth US$1000. Gold is not value per se. Gold is historically accepted representation of value. Gold is relatively scarce and stable material so it makes a nice representation for value. But we could use anything else as well.

Money gets its value by its ability to be exchanged for goods and services! Money is valuable if you can exchange it for food, new computer, electricity, new haircut, car, concert ticket, baby sitting, massage or whatever your heart desires. If somebody is willing to give you food in exchange for a bag of sand and gravel, then that bag of sand and gravel has a value. It doesn't matter that governments don't print numbers on sandbags.

So, to get back to our point of interest here, as long as there are people willing to exchange goods and services for BitCoins and there are people willing to exchange BitCoins to and from Euro, USD and other currencies, BitCoin is money as good as any other. Except that it is actually better.

Why is BitCoin better than the "real" money

Community managed money system that is regulated by open-source software gives

control and transparency of the system itself – you might think that your government is responsible to you about their handling of the common good that is the money system. Well, bad news, they are not. More often that not, you have no insight in how much of it they print, what do they do with it nor how it is regulated. Unlike the state law, computer code is not optional to follow. It will work the way it's intended no matter how much money or political power one has.

stability of the system – any system that is centralized is, by definition, unstable. It takes just one node to crash and the whole system goes down. In decentralized system if one (or much more than one) node fails, the rest of the system keeps functioning without interruption. If Central Bank's computer system gets down (and computers do crash, even those super expensive ones) the whole system is down. It's more than unlikely that all the computers of all the BitCoin users will go down at the same time. And as long as two of them work, those two can deal with money, and when the rest is back, they'll just pick up where they left.

anonymous transactions – BitCoin system is constructed with high security in mind and while all the transactions are visible and public, they are encrypted. What you do with your money is your own business and nobody else's.

impossibility of inflation – System is also preventing the possibility of printing and infusing fresh money in the system after the amount of 21.000.000 BTC is reached. To do that, one has to change the code and make all the other users to accept the change. If you ever dreamt about democratic control of the economy, this is it.

low transfer fees – I'm not quite sure how the transfer fees work here (at the moment there's practically none) but the distributed system makes monopoly on transfers impossible so the high competition is in the play. Where the competition is high the prices are low.

impossibility of state or corporate control over somebody's funding – Remember when PayPal and Mastercard blocked WikiLeaks' account? They did the same with Anonymous and even Diaspora. If there's no central authority nobody can block other's account, nor check who gives money to whom and for which reason. Yeah, it's called freedom.

probably some other things I can't think of now

So this is the basic idea. In the following days I'll write about how BitCoin actually works, both the technical part and in everyday use. In the meanwhile, please share your experience with BitCoin if you have any or what do you think about the idea.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2011/bitcoin-digital-money/feed5http://www.acidzen.org/2011/bitcoin-digital-moneyPsycho-killer And A Fashion Brandhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/orMqpvi8-SI/psychokiller-fashion-brand
http://www.acidzen.org/2011/psychokiller-fashion-brand#respondThu, 08 Sep 2011 20:08:31 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1308You remember the sick bastard Anders Behring Breivik? Yes, the one that killed 69 people on the island of Utoya and further eight in Oslo on the same day. Now arrested and on trial, Breivik hits the media again. This time by the choice of the shirts he wears. Yes, that's exactly what I said. And it's not fashion magazines that care

]]>You remember the sick bastard Anders Behring Breivik? Yes, the one that killed 69 people on the island of Utoya and further eight in Oslo on the same day.

Now arrested and on trial, Breivik hits the media again. This time by the choice of the shirts he wears. Yes, that's exactly what I said. And it's not fashion magazines that care about his shirts. And it's not that he turned to Lady Gaga style. On the court sessions, Anders Behring Breivik is wearing Lacoste shirts. And that turns out to be a huge problem for Lacoste.

Norwegian daily Dagbladet said [Lacoste] bosses had now written to Oslo police demanding 32-year-old Breivik be stopped from wearing their garments.

An Oslo police spokesman told the paper: "The company feels that such a man sporting their clothes could do considerable harm to their reputation."

I still hope this is some Onion-type hoax. But it's not.

For decades we've been brainwashed by corporations, their brands and trademarks into believing that their stuff will make us better, happier, more successful and what not just by using their products. It wasn't enough to say "Lacoste makes good shirts". No, it had to be all sorts of insane promises, lifestyle and identification with celebrities.

Because people actually believe that shit. They do believe that wearing Lacoste will earn them reputation and even educated look. Of course, it's not only Lacoste, Nike will make you a great basketball player, Apple will make you hip and tech savvy. Sure they will. At least in the eyes of the other mindless brand-whores.

Sooner or later, it had to backfire. Now the psycho-killer is wearing Lacoste and marketing geniuses who thought that "Lacoste is making good shirts" is not a good advertisement are counting the possible damage. And, being the marketing geniuses, they are making things worse by drawing the attention to the crocodile on Breivik's chest. Would you even notice what he's wearing if they haven't started the buzz. Hardly so.

If there was any hope for this civilization, Lacoste's problem with Breivik's fashion taste would teach big brands a couple of things. But there will always be people stupid enough to try to buy a lifestyle so brands will respond accordingly.

One more thing is scary here. What if corporations, determined to protect their brands, employ a different system of selling their products. What if they decide that the brand sign is still their property after you bought the product and that they have the right to protect it from your misuse?

Then they will stop selling us clothes but sell us license agreements to wear their clothes instead. Yes, just like software companies do. You go to the store and sign a contract that grants you the right to wear the shirt unless you are killing someone, attending a trial for mass-murder… declaring yourself as a conservative/liberal/gay/hippie… driving a car cheaper than US$100.000… Special part of the contract could handle your treatment of the product i.e. it should be always clean and ironed and no other layer of clothes should at any time cover the logo. Also, you might be obliged to pay attention to the style and colors of the other pieces of clothes. And so on… After all, they have to think of the sanctity of their holy trademark and if you think that your dirty and messy hair can go with their product, then you are wrong. Yes, I know it sounds insane, but it wasn't me who started this train of thought.

]]>http://www.acidzen.org/2011/psychokiller-fashion-brand/feed0http://www.acidzen.org/2011/psychokiller-fashion-brandThe Art Of Managing Google+ Circleshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/FreethinkingOutLoud/~3/m7GUfc5J_nY/managing-google-plus-circles
http://www.acidzen.org/2011/managing-google-plus-circles#commentsSun, 03 Jul 2011 17:21:07 +0000http://www.acidzen.org/?p=1265Google finally answered my prayers for a good and usable social network. Google Plus (Google+ or G+ for short) is not a whole week old but it makes a lot of buzz (no pun intended). If you are one of those that managed to get in, make some contacts and play around you know why. While it might be seen

]]>Google finally answered my prayers for a good and usable social network. Google Plus (Google+ or G+ for short) is not a whole week old but it makes a lot of buzz (no pun intended). If you are one of those that managed to get in, make some contacts and play around you know why. While it might be seen as just another social network, and while it does sound and look quite familiar, there are some new features. The most praised one being circles. Which is unprecedented power of managing, sorting and organizing your contacts. Maybe it sounds trivial, but it actually changes the way we'll use social networks from now on.

Problem is, now when all those people are not just "friends" (most of which being anything but friends) but can (and should) be organized in circles, how to do that in the most useful and efficient way. Here's my (rather early) attempt to make the most of it.

We have three concerns:

privacy

targeting

flooding prevention

Privacy – Simply put, you don't want your boss, co-workers, family and some other people to see the photos of you from the lastnight's party that still painfully rings inside your skull. And vacation photos are for the family and the closest group of friends and nobody else. As well as the status update that you just landed on XX airport and had a sandwich.

Targeting – This one is similar to privacy except that it's the receiving end that suffers. Ideal social network delivers right messages to the right audience. Your friends and family are not interested in business related links that you want to share with your co-workers. You probably have several group of acquaintances with different interests so it's annoying to send all your stuff to all of them. The problem escalates if your social networking experience is bilingual as mine is, then a half of the messages your peers get is not even understandable to them.

Flooding prevention – With privacy solved and all different networks and accounts coming under one roof, chances are that your list of Google+ contacts will count thousands of names. After all, it's Google contact list which contains all the emails from the inbox you hardly ever bother to delete. As a result, you might open G+ to check what's new and find yourself missing important stuff from family and friends in the endless torrent of status updates and photos and links shared.

circles according to Alighieri Dante

Important thing to remember is that circles are more like tags than folders, so one contact can be in more than one circle without the risk of duplicated messages from you. By no means you should organize concentric circles based on closeness only. Other thing is, you can have as many circles as you need and your contacts can't see which circles they are in nor the name of the circles.

My first step was to sort the people by the language. Both of those are quite huge and are intended for posts concerning general public (no privacy needed) just to keep everybody understand what I'm talking.

Then a circle for the people I meet and hang around in person, and one or two subsets of it for really close people. One for those that have seen me making fool of myself in the pub and the other for those who are close and should remain that way by picturing me nice and decent.

Then, topic oriented circles. One for Second Life, one for Tai Chi, one for clubbers and music people… you get the idea. Bosses and co-workers deserve one as well. These circles might as well have their subsets depending on how close and intimate are you with some people there. You'll probably want to have a circle or two for businesses, organizations and causes (similar to Facebook pages) as soon as those get implemented. And one for celebs and interesting people you follow Twitter-like style.

Of course, you have "blocked" circle as well. Some people are good only when muted. :)

In essence, start with separated circles (they might be overlapping) based on interests. Then make inner-circles of closer friends for your privacy.

So with a nice collection of circles, some intersecting, some being part of larger circles, some not overlapping at all, you have a nice starting point for a fulfilling online life. Sure, things will change, people will jump from one circle to the other, but that's the reality of social life both off- and on-line. It would be wise to start organizing as soon as possible, while the number of your contacts is relatively small.

With all this you already have a nice list of circles on the left-hand side and clicking each of them gives you filtered stream of posts from just that circle. Of course, you can make additional circles for this purpose only. Like: "must-read, "regular", "funny", "the bloody stream that takes 10 hours a day to read"…

This is an early attempt, based on four days of experience, chatting with nice people with the same problems and ex-Google's Paul Adam's presentation The Real Life Social Network. It's far from definitive wisdom, so I guess I might have a follow-up on this. In the meanwhile, I'd really like to hear your tips and tricks.